The civil and commercial judge who understands the preventive contest of the agro-exporter Vicentin extended the deadline for submitting payment proposals until October 17 within the framework of the cramdown or rescue of the company, which had been ordered last Friday, judicial sources reported this Friday. He Judge Fabián Lorenzini He argued that by extending the deadline it seeks to ensure that “people or companies interested in competing” do not stop doing so “for non-essential reasons” to the process.
In last week’s resolution, when he rejected the payment proposal made by Vicentin and opened the cramdown period, the magistrate set September 29 as the last date to present the company’s continuity proposals. In which he signed today, Lorenzini extended that period.
“To promote the widest dissemination of the process, the originally established period will be extended by ten judicial business days,” says the resolution and consequently, it continues, “the new deadline for interested parties to submit their registration requests will expire on October 17, 2023 or the immediately following business day if it is a holiday.”
Sources in the case indicated that until this Friday no proposal to rescue the agro-exporter had been formalized, which has been in preventive bankruptcy since March 2020, after declaring itself bankrupt. cessation of payments at the beginning of December of the previous year. The bankruptcy liability verified in the file processed by Judge Lorenzini reaches 1.5 billion dollars.
In the proposal that the magistrate rejected last week, the Vicentin executives offered to pay about US$500 million, a small part in cash US$30,000which covered 100% of the debt to 816 creditors – and the rest in a 12 year termwith a reduction that reached up to 80% for creditors with the highest verified amount.
The company announced that it would appeal the rejection of the homologation of the payment agreement but that, in any case, it would present a new offer at cramdown. For this, Vicentin needs there to be a proposal from a third party with which to compete, as established in article 48 of the Bankruptcy and Insolvency Law, which regulates “rescue”.
The director of the Bank of the Argentine Nation (BNA), Silvia Batakissaid earlier this week that the entity that leads the largest creditor in individual terms, with about US$300 million, would participate in a mixed offer to be a shareholder in the continuity of Vicentin.
Representatives of another important private creditor also showed Télam their intention to make a proposal to avoid the bankruptcy of the main agro-exporter of national capital. For them, interested parties must improve the debt payment offer made by Vicentin and rejected last week by the judge, as well as present a plan to keep the company’s plants and jobs operational, among other requirements.
For its part, the Chamber of the Oil Industry (Ciara) and the Cereal Exporters Center (CEC), that bring together the most powerful players in the sector, indicated today in a statement that “it is imperative that all legal procedures and the division of powers, emanating from the National Constitution, and the precepts that arise from it must be followed without deviation” in the Vicentin process.
The communication added that “violating them generates legal insecurity, questions about private property, occupational risks and, likewise, discourages investments in the country,” although it did not specify what facts a possible transgression is based on. In the same text, the agro-exporters said that “if the National State continues with its decision to establish a state agro-industrial export company, it should perform under the same conditions of equality before the law and the rules of the market”. “Any differential treatment in financial, tax or other matters will generate serious economic and social consequences in this industry sector,” they added.
Source: Ambito
